Event Highlights: T.S. Eliot and the Mind of Europe
On Thursday, April 7, several poets gathered at the Boston University Castle to celebrate the publication of The Poems of T.S. Eliot: The Annotated Text by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. Participats included poets Bill Coyle, David Ferry Saskia Hamilton, George Kalogeris, Karl Kirchwey, Meg Tyler, and Alissa Valles, who spearheaded the event. Presented by the Editorial Institute. Sponsored by the Editorial Institute, the Center for the Study of Europe, and the Arts Initiative
The event celebrating the new edition of T.S. Eliot poems featuring commentary by Christopher Ricks began with an introduction by Alissa Valles, who explains the “fruits of tremendous labor” and the “lucidity, passion, and wit” that Ricks brings to his works. After describing how Ricks could successfully teach a humanities course on the fundamental questions of Western civilization while trapped on a desert island, Valles stated that the examination of Eliot’s work forces readers to “ask whether his concept of the mind of Europe still has purchase on us.” Valles explained the organizational order of the program, then began reading passages from the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” which was written in 1919 immediately after the Great War. She followed with a poem from The Waste Land which was translated into Polish in 1943, and defended her choice as an examination of the “fringes of Europe” given her study of Eastern European literature.
The next speaker was Meg Tyler, who read two poems, the “Journey of the Magi” by Eliot and then a poem by Irish poet Louis Macneice. Her choice of Macneice was driven by the poet’s pressuring of Eliot, as Macneice convinced the British poet that “Autumn Journal” was ‘up to par’, and influenced its 1935 publication date. Tyler’s reading of Macneice outlined what she described as an “arrival poem” rather than a “journey.”
Karl Kirchwey then spoke about a young Italian poet, Giovanni Giudici, who watched Eliot read in Rome in December of 1947. The 23-year-old Italian was inspired by Eliot, later becoming a translator of Russian and British writers, and Kirchwey explained that his translations of Giudici are a result of his interest in Eliot’s obvious influence on the Italian poet’s writing. He claimed that there are many parallels between the two writers, as the “wretched nostalgia spoken by Giudici… the retrospect on a wasted life,” is a theme clearly demonstrated in the works of Eliot. Kirchwey then began reading of a poem by Giudici published in the late 1950s during the economic revolution in Italy. Afterwards, Kirchwey told the audience that Giudici had a deep appreciation for that which is “more than human”, explaining how his cardinal virtues of persistence and devotion exemplify a “wisdom of humility.” Kirchwey continued a pattern of reading excerpts and providing analysis, describing how the clear resolve of Eliot was attractive to Giudici, and continued by reading Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday”. Kirchwey explained how the despair found in Eliot’s works led the Italian to feel a new resolve, and he finished his presentation by reading the Giudici’s Italian translation of “Ash Wednesday.”
The next speaker was George Kalogeris, who read two poems by Eliot and one poem by the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy. Kalogeris told the story of how the English writer E.M. Forrester convinced Eliot to publish several of Cavafy’s poems in 1924, translating his works and introducing him to the English speaking world. Following a reading of Section 3 of Eliot’s “Preludes” Kalogeris read his own translation of Cavafy’s “On the Deck of a Ship.” To finish, the author read an excerpt of Section 4 of The Waste Land, entitled “Death by Water”. Saskia Hamilton was the next contributor, who read from Eliot’s “Little Gidding” and then finished with a deeply moving reading of Robert Lowell’s translation of Dante’s Inferno.
Bill Coyle began by explaining how he planned to read from the beginning of Four Quartets, including “Burnt Norton” and then finish with a poem by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. Coyle explained that Eliot made two trips to Sweden in his lifetime, one in 1947 to accept the Nobel Prize and once before in 1942 during a wartime speaking tour, which the author noted was an interesting decision by the British government. In 1952, Tranströmer wrote to a friend that the Four Quartets were his daily bread that “crunched between his teeth” and Coyle stated that the Swede’s works were deeply influenced by Eliot’s Four Quartets. Coyle then read from “Burnt Norton” and followed with the final poem in Tranströmer’s first book, which was published in 1954, and concluded by stating that the Swedish poet “saw himself as ‘Eliot’s grandchild’.”
Valles then introduced Christopher Ricks, who began by reading a Google Translated Danish review of the new Eliot collection. He explained how his decision to do so, beyond an amusing exploration into technological failings, was to demonstrate the value of the talents and skills necessary to be a successful translator. He explained how in an examination of Eliot’s emphasis of l’entre guerre it is important to recognize that “we are always between wars” and that this concept is what led to both WWI and WWII given the paradox of a post-peace vs. post-war world order. Ricks described that the 20 pages of notes by himself and Jim McCue were focused on outlining critical points of information, based on the “most extraordinary Eliot line… ‘don’t throw away that sausage. It’ll come in handy.’” After the audience laughed, Ricks explained his reasoning, delving into the deeper meaning of Eliot’s poem about the traumatizing transition from war to peace given the “tragedy of surrendering arms”, and how, in retrospect, the book “The Coming War” by Erich Ludendorff ominously predicted the result of the failed Treaty of Versailles. Ricks concluded the conversation by thanking BU for the opportunity to have an Editorial Institute to promote the humanities, and then let Eliot have the final word by playing a recording of the poet reading from “Tramp for March” at Harvard in 1947.
Listen to the event on Sound Cloud: